Meek and Americanism: brilliant with the stars

Alexander Beaufort Meek was 15 years old when he enrolled at the University of Georgia, though he transferred to the new University of Alabama in 1831. He had just turned 30 when he returned to the University of Georgia to give an address to the Phi Betta Kappa and Demosthenian Societies. By then, he was fairly accomplished in the legal world, having been named a probate judge in Alabama. "You have called me back," Meek said in his speech on August 8, 1844, "from a distant home, over a wide interval of years, to the scene of my earliest collegiate life."

Meek took the opportunity to consider the reactions to revisiting a once familiar place: lament for things now gone, excitement over positive change. For Meek, who worked by then both in literature and government, change was important in his native South. Literature and government could be improved and, in turn, could improve the character of the region, as well as the nation as a whole. Writing and the law are not the end goal for mankind, they are the path to follow "to accomplish the great design for which man was created". To grow as a people is to improve constantly over time, always spiraling upward with great deeds and accomplishments, but never satisfied at attaining an end result:

Mankind have learned that governments are somewhat more than games or machines kept in curious motion for the amusement and edification of rulers; and literatures are beginning to be regarded, not as the phantasmagoria of poets and dreamers, the sunset scaffoldings of fancy, but as something very far beyond that. The old secret has come out, that man's immortality has already begun, and, by these things, you are moulding and fashioning him in his destinies forever.

In literature, Meek says, the goal is to focus on "Americanism" (the speech was named "Americanism in Literature"). We must grow in our letters just as we have been experiencing massive population growth. Among his suggestions to improve American writing, he emphasizes it must have national purpose and, more than that, that writing must be as representative as the diversity of the landscape of the entire nation:

Our country has extended her jurisdiction over the fairest and most fertile regions. The rich bounty is poured into her lap, and breathes its influence upon her population. Their capacities are not pent and thwarted by the narrow limits which restrict the citizens of other countries... Such are some of the physical aspects of our country, and such the influence they are destined to have upon our national mind. Very evidently they constitute noble sources of inspiration, illustration and description.

Not just the diversity of the landscape, Meek emphasizes, but the country also has a diversity of people, with ancestry all over the world. Further, the unique version of democracy practiced in the United States offers opportunities of inspiration. Though we have already succeeded with a few great writers, particularly Washington Irving and historian George Bancroft, we continue to look to the future, Meek says, and strive to grow. Meek, of course, will contribute to that Americanism as a poet, historian, and essayist. He concludes:

Let us then abide in the faith that this country of ours, as she is destined to present to the world, the proudest spectacle of political greatness ever beheld, will not be neglectful of the other, the highest interest of humanity, its intellectual ascension ; but that both shall flourish here, in unexampled splendor, with reciprocal benefit, beneath the ample folds of that banner, which shall then float out, in its blue beauty, like a tropical night, brilliant with the stars of a whole hemisphere!

Lathrop on Gettysburg: an angry embrace

25 years after the Battle of Gettysburg, survivors of the bloody battle joined for a reunion at the scene where it all happened, on July 3, 1888. The guest speaker for the gathering was the Hawaii-born poet, editor, and novelist George Parsons Lathrop, perhaps best known as husband of Rose Hawthorne, daughter of Nathaniel Hawthorne. The poem he presented that day was simply titled "Gettysburg: A Battle Ode." Despite how his poem begins — "Victors, living, with laureled brow, / And you that sleep beneath the sward!" — Lathrop particularly addressed the Confederate veterans who had lost that day in 1863. He emphasized the peaceful reunion of these former foes, who "fiercely warred" not so long ago, but now, "Brother and brother, now, we chant a common chord."

Lathrop's poem also gives specifics about the day, including individual soldiers and officers who he praises for their bravery. He even gives a play-by-play of which groups charged who and when. Before all that, however, he said the scene was "blameless" even as it is now "known to nations far away." In fact, he describes how the day was, otherwise, a normal, peaceful one before the "living lines of foemen" appeared, full of the tragic "Madness of desire to kill."

The farms that hosted the battle become a garden for those men who will die and be harvested by Death. The poem is purposely all-inclusive of all sides, even to the point that Lathrop gives a sort of inventory of those involved:

Men of New Hampshire, Pennsylvanians,
   Maine men, firm as the rock’s rough ledge!
Swift Mississippians, lithe Carolinians
   Bursting over the battle’s edge!
Bold Indiana men; gallant Virginians;
   Jersey and Georgia legions clashing;—
Pick of Connecticut; quick Vermonters;
   Louisianians, madly dashing;—
And, swooping still to fresh encounters,
   New York myriads, whirlwind-led!—
All your furious forces, meeting,
   Torn, entangled, and shifting place,
Blend like wings of eagles beating
   Airy abysses, in angry embrace.

The battle which brings these foes into an intermingled mix of weapons and bodies is juxtaposed with the re-union of the states, and the reunion of the veterans ("like a bride"). Together, these men join in mourning and in celebration, regardless of previous alliances.

    Two hostile bullets in mid-air
            Together shocked,
            And swift were locked
    Forever in a firm embrace.
    Then let us men have so much grace
        To take the bullets' place,
         And learn that we are held
            By laws that weld
            Our hearts together!
    As once we battled hand to hand,
        So hand in hand to-day we stand,
            Sworn to each other,
            Brother and brother,
    In storm and mist, or calm, translucent weather:
    And Gettysburg’s guns, with their death-giving roar,
    Echoed from ocean to ocean, shall pour
         Quickening life to the nation’s core;
            Filling our minds again
With the spirit of those who wrought in the
                        Field of the Flower of Men!

Douglass: where the light comes

"It was a meeting long to be remembered," concluded William Cooper Nell in a letter to a colleague. The letter, dated February 15, 1848, described an anti-slavery speech given by Frederick Douglass in New Bedford, Massachusetts. In the "mere sketch," Nell emphasized that, "New Bedford has a widely spread fame as an Anti-Slavery town." The inhabitants of that town of 16,000 had actively helped gain sympathy for the cause, in part because the population included "twelve hundred colored people," 75% of which had come from enslavement. Douglass was one of them for a time.

After running away from enslavement, Douglass temporarily settled in New Bedford (and it was here that he chose his last name). Returning to New Bedford that February, he particularly noted the corruption of the federal government which had just annexed Texas, which he believed was a ploy to enhance slave power in the Senate, not to mention "the spirit of conquest that possesses the American heart," as Nell reported. In his speech, Douglass also broke down the views of Senator Henry Clay, who had been favoring colonization. This plan to remove free blacks and send them to Africa was an injustice, Douglass said. Nell quoted Douglass:

It [e.g. the colonization plan] is our deadly enemy, we shall not obey its wishes, but shall do that which Mr. Clay 'wishes' us not to do; we shall stay here in our country, identified with the slave, laboring to obtain our rights and his, and we shall secure them... The hand of Providence is with, and guides us; crush us to the earth, and we rise again; try to starve us, and we grow strong and vigorous; close up your hearts, legislate against us, and try to make us hate the land of our birth, and we love it the more. You may try to keep us low, ignorant and in the dark; but the light is shining all around; to it, though slowly, yet surely will come... Slavery cannot exist where the light comes.

Nell imagined what it would be like if Douglass and Clay had a public debate over the question in Washington, D.C. "What a spectacle!" he imagined, "A negro, and recently a slave, debating with the 'Demosthenes of the nation.'"

Nell's letter was published several days later in the North Star, an anti-slavery newspaper founded by Douglass and Nell in New York. At the end of it, he reiterated their shared belief that the press would help their cause, and that those who supported the North Star were supporting abolitionism. Douglass's speech, he reported, resulted in 20 new subscribers that day.

Simms: our Muses reassume their powers

William Gilmore Simms refused to act like an old man. In his last full year of life, he continued working, contributing articles and poems to the newly founded Nineteenth Century magazine; he did not receive pay for his contributions but hoped to help this new organ of Southern culture. Still, he was weary. He admitted he lived only for his children (six of fifteen survived) and grandchildren (three of six were then living). Perhaps his biggest contribution in this period was a prologue written for the opening of the new Charleston Academy of Music. It earned him $55.

The address was delivered by another on December 1, 1869. "I was quite too unwell to attend the theatre at the opening," Simms wrote two days later, "but am told that the Lady who delivered the address did so with grace, spirit & propriety." On the same day, to Evert Augustus Duyckinck, Simms admitted he had not left the house in three days but heard his address was delivered "with excellent effect." The Academy, in a re-appropriated building from the 1850s, was the talk of the town. One local newspaper reported it seemed, "Everybody was going." Everybody except for Simms, apparently. In his place "a graceful blonde" named Lillie Eldridge read his poem (excerpted here from its printing in the Charleston Daily News the next day):

This once proud city, seated by the sea,
With subject realm as boundless and as free,
Though prostrate long beneath an adverse Fate
That left her homes and temples desolate,
Hath yet such wondrous gifts in sea and shore,
It needs but will her fortunes to restore;
The stern resolve; With Labor in her marts,
Hope in her homes and courage in her hearts,
To prove superior to the hostile blast,
And all repair, so glorious in her Past!

Not now in arms, but arts, we seek the strife;
The arts alone illume the paths of life;
Labor, but blindly gropes along the way,
Till Art lets in the glorious Light of Day!
'Tis she informs us with the sweet desire,
Uplifts the soul till all its wings aspire;
Trains Fancy's height, assiduous, to explore,
Our boundless realm of rock, and wood, and shore...

Such are Art's beautified toils, and such be ours!
To-night our Muses reassume their powers:
This is their temple! Bright the forms arise,
And all the world of magic fills our eyes!
There Genius comes upon his beamy car,
And lo! the crowds that gather from afar!

...To you who love the beautiful and true,
Friends of the Drama, we appeal to you!
Come with your smile, the virtuous and the wise,
And cheer the servants of the scene ye prize;
Bring fearless judgment, nail with heartiest laud;
Denounced the Wrong, and still the Right applaud;
Touch'd by the Poet's truth, embrace the True,
And be yourselves, the nobly great ye view;
Spurn shameless Vice; pluck vain presumption down,
And tear from sly Hypocrsy his gown;
Cheer infant Merit in his toilsome strife;
And crown achievement with the palm of Life;
So shall the virtues bless your name and age,
And find their noblest ally in the Stage.

Clearly, Simms saw the opening of the Academy of Music, which was really a concert hall and theater, as a stepping stone to improving the cultural literacy of the South — a cause he often considered. Particularly in the years following the Civil War, the poet/novelist hoped his fellow Southerners would make something of themselves.

Incidentally, in the month that followed, Simms was surprisingly open in discussing his ailments. In a letter to his friend and fellow Southern author Paul Hamilton Hayne, Simms admitted to having: "Dyspepsia, in its most aggravated forms,  Indigestion, Constipation, Nausea, frequent vomitings, occasional vertigo, and, as a safety valve to this, hemorrhoids." He died about six months later. The Charleston Academy of Music honored him with a tribute eight years to the month after his opening address was presented.

Bryant on Scott: brilliant luminary

William Cullen Bryant was busy in the fall of 1872. His day job as editor-in-chief of the New-York Evening Post was hectic amidst a presidential election, he was steadily working on a translation of Homer, and was editing a book on the unique scenery of the United States called Picturesque America. Still, when he was invited to give a speech on the dedication of a statue of Walter Scott at New York City's Central Park, he accepted.

His address, given on November 4, 1872, as the statue by Scottish artist John Steell was unveiled, honored the Americans of Scottish descent who had led the efforts to honor their countryman author. Bryant, after all, was old enough to remember Scott before his death in 1832. He remembered that "this brilliant luminary of modern literature" first drew attention for his ballad "Lay of the Last Minstrel." His work, the poet said, was infused with the traditions of Scotland: "In it we had all their fire, their rapid narrative, their unlabored graces, their pathos, animating a story to which he had given a certain epic breadth and unity." He goes on:

No other metrical narratives in our language seem to me to possess an equal power of enchaining the attention of the reader, and carrying him on from incident to incident with such entire freedom from weariness.

Bryant offered specific praise on several of Scott's works, and even the author's choice to print inexpensive editions which allowed his work to circulate more widely. His "Waverley" novels too, Bryant claimed, began a new era in literature. Those works were written in such rapid succession, he recalled, that they were similar to the fireworks shot off on the Fourth of July in the United States. He continued the metaphor, describing how each volume rose from the horizon and burst with a brilliant hue. Bryant was especially pleased that his statue should grace Central Park, which had only recently become a designed public space. He pictured the spirit of Scott's wandering about the park, a veritable army protecting the statue. Bryant concludes:

And now, as the statue of Scott is set up in this beautiful park, which a few years since possessed no human associations historical or poetic connected with its shades, its lawns, its rocks, and its waters, these grounds become peopled with new memories. Henceforth the silent earth at this spot will be eloquent of old traditions, the airs that stir the branches of the trees will whisper of feats of chivalry to the visitor. All that vast crowd of ideal personages created by the imagination of Scott will enter with his sculptured effigy and remain... They will pass in endless procession around the statue of him in whose prolific brain they had their birth, until the language which we speak shall perish, and the spot on which we stand shall be again a woodland wilderness.

Had I a thousand lives to give: Memorializing the Boy Hero of the Confederacy

Sam Davis became a courier for the Confederacy after his time as a soldier ended in injury. In November 1863, he was found by the Union Army secreting Union battle plans. He refused to name his accomplice, and his alleged response to his captors became legendary: "If I had a thousand lives to live, I would give them all rather than to betray a friend." Supposedly, even as they were about to hang him as a spy, they offered him another opportunity to save his own life by giving them information. He refused and was hanged. He was 21 years old.

The incident and Davis's commitment to his beliefs inspired many in the South, even after the Civil War. His youth and resiliency inspired his nickname as the "Boy Hero of the Confederacy." On October 11, 1906, nearly 43 years after Davis's capture and execution, local citizens led mainly by women unveiled a statue of Davis in Pulaski, Tennessee near the spot of his death (pictured above shortly after its unveiling; incidentally, the same town has infamous notoriety as the founding place of the Ku Klux Klan). Read at that ceremony was a poem by Alabama-born poet John Trotwood Moore. In fact, Moore's poem, "Sam Davis," had already been published and its popularity helped spread support for the monument and increased Davis's status in collective memory of Tennessee.

"Tell me his name and you are free,"
The General said, while from the tree
The grim rope dangled threat'ningly.

The birds ceased singing—happy birds.
That sang of home and mother-words.
The sunshine kissed his cheek—dear sun:
It loves a life that's just begun!
The very breezes held their breath
To watch the fight twixt life and death.
And O, how calm and sweet and free.
Smiled back the hills of Tennessee!
Smiled back the hills, as if to say,
"O, save your life for us to-day."

"Tell me his name and you are free,"
The General said, " and I shall see
You safe within the rebel line—
I'd love to save such life as thine."

A tear gleamed down the ranks of blue—
(The bayonets were tipped with dew).
Across the rugged cheek of war
God's angels rolled a teary star.
The boy looked up—'twas this they heard:
"And would you have me break my word?"

A tear stood in the General's eye!
"My boy, I hate to see thee die
Give me the traitor's name and fly!"

Young Davis smiled, as calm and free
As he who walked on Galilee:
"Had I a thousand lives to live.
Had I a thousand lives to give,
I'd lose them, nay, I'd gladly die
Before I'd live one life, a lie!"
He turned—for not a soldier stirred—
"Your duty, men—I gave my word."

The hills smiled back a farewell smile.
The breeze sobbed o'er his hair awhile,
The birds broke out in glad refrain,
The sunbeams kissed his cheek again—
Then, gathering up their blazing bars.
They shook his name among the stars.

O Stars, that now his brothers are,
O Sun, his sire in truth and light.
Go tell the list'ning worlds afar
Of him who died for truth and right!
For martyr of all martyrs he
Who dies to save an enemy!

The poem obviously romanticizes the event, showing that the very landscape of Tennessee supported his actions and his decisions. Even the enemy regrets such a strong, young hero should die. The monument of Davis equally romanticizes the subject, showing him with arms crossed defiantly and fearlessly. Whether or not these depictions are entirely accurate is irrelevant; Sam Davis was one of many examples of Southerners creating larger-than-life legends about the Confederacy to give it a positive image.

Johnson: She dwelt within a lifelong dream

Robert Underwood Johnson spent his life in the world of publishing, starting off in the periodical industry in the 1870s, before becoming ambassador to Italy in the early 20th century. He was an author, editor, poet, and fought for international copyright and preservation of historic sites and places with natural beauty. He befriended, among others, Nikola Tesla, John Muir, as well as literary figures like Edmund Clarence Stedman and James Whitcomb Riley. Many of his poems are addressed to these friends — and to some who were less famous. His poem to "A Teacher" was dedicated to "The Beautiful Memory Of One Who Gave Her Life To Her Work" and was read at the National Education Association convention in Madison Square Garden in New York, July 6, 1916:

Go praise the Hero, ye who may:
   I sing the Teacher,—one for whom
The morrow was but more to-day,—
Whose fainting labor showed the way
   To pluck one's gladness from his doom.

The leisure others gave to joy
   She gave to toil: to fill the day
With wine of wisdom her employ.
She, once as merry as a boy,
   Had long forgotten how to play.

I see her when the scurrying band
   Have left her, weary and alone,
Her pale cheek pillowed on her hand,
Watching the wistful evening land
   Without repining, tear, or moan.

Mayhap her spirit, never sad,
   (Ah, what a challenge memory stirs!)
Demanded why grim fate forbade
Her motherhood, who gave each lad
   The love she might have given hers.

She dwelt within a lifelong dream
   Of seeing lands of far romance,—
Of loitering by Arno's stream,
Of catching Athens' sunset gleam
   That can alone its fame enhance.

Still, an uncloistered nun she went,
   With naught more fretful than a sigh,
And in her happy task she spent
Her sweetness, like some rose's scent
   In sacred treasury laid by.

Her pure devotion did not gauge
   Her service by her daily need;
And not her scanty, grudging wage,
Nor spectre of forsaken Age,
   Could take the beauty from her creed.

She faced her calling as it stood—
   Incessant, onerous, obscure;
Content if she but sometime could
Be silent partner with the Good,
   Whose victory was to her so sure.

She knew that all who reach the height
   The path of sympathy have trod;
And pondered, many a wakeful night,
How she could aid with gentle might
   The unseen miracles of God.

What though she might not wait the fruit?
   What though she went before the flower?
She gave the timbre to the lute,
And in the voice that else were mute
   Divined the rare, supernal power.

Of all she lent her strength, a few
   Shall wear her name as amulet.
How many more who struggle through,
Remembering not to whom 'tis due,
   Shall still keep memory of the debt!

Oh, could we know of life the whole
   Hid record, what an envied place
Were yours upon the honor scroll,
Ye faithful sentries of the soul,
   Ye childless mothers of the race!

A dream came to a sailor bold

400 years after Christopher Columbus "sailed the ocean blue," a society of New Yorkers donated a statue of the explorer. It was finally installed and unveiled in Central Park on May 12, 1894. The aging Julia Ward Howe was invited to read a special poem written for the occasion, "The Mariner's Dream":

Where shall we find the golden key
That opes to peace and liberty?
The earth is full of grievous wars,
The soldier's tread her beauty mars,
The captive's chains are fast and locked,
The poor man by the rich man mocked.
The promise of the Christ we hear,
But who shall bring fulfillment near?

The poem predicts the founding of the United States as a land of "peace and liberty" and equality — and, certainly, of prosperity:

A dream came to a sailor bold,
A happy dream of good untold;
And a little bird sang: "Follow me
Westward, over the unknown sea.
A star shall lead thy chosen band,
And bring thy slender craft to land.
Beyond the waters thou shalt find
Regions of splendor unconfined,
Where giant rivers fruitful flow,
Where birds of tropic plumage glow,
Where the old treasures of thy race
Shall grow and multiply apace.
And ancient Rule renew its health
In a new glorious commonwealth."

The dreamer waking, bowed his head,
And on the wondrous errand sped.
With pleading rare he wrung the gold
From hands reluctant to unfold,
And loosing from old Europe's shore
Sailed westward, westward evermore.

Looking forward to a land "where sounded ne'er the Christian word," the poetic Columbus embarks on what he calls "Earth's noblest conquest." Though his crew is "distrustful," he vows to fulfill this vision, even if "all mankind" turns against him. This boldness, Howe notes, is now recognized as "millions of voices" sing in praise of Columbus.

Here gather we in Gotham town,
Of all our western world the crown,
While ladies fair and gallants gay
Unite to celebrate the day.
But while we list the high discourse,
And while the Paean has its course,
Let Faith re-consecrate this form,
Adventured once 'gainst sea and storm.

For 'twas this hand that held the key,
Unlocking Peace and Liberty.
When all we have and all we are
Hung on the guidance of a star,
And on the answer, dimly guessed
In one resolved, responsive breast.

Chapman on Roosevelt: Life seems belittled

Theodore Roosevelt had been dead for about a month when his fellow Harvard alumnus John Jay Chapman presented a poem in his honor at the Harvard Club dinner in New York on February 9, 1919.

Life seems belittled when a great man dies;
The age is cheapened and time's furnishings
Stare like the trappings of an empty stage.
Ring down the curtain! We must pause, go home
And let the plot of the world reshape itself
To comprehensive form. Roosevelt dead!
The genial giant walks the earth no more,
Grasping the hands of all men, deluging
Their hearts, like Pan, with bright Cyclopean fire
That dizzied them at times, yet made them glad.

Chapman and Roosevelt had become friends as early as during the future President's tenure as a police commissioner in New York. They shared sorrow in the death of their respective first wives and, much later, the death of their sons during World War I. As such, Chapman's tribute to Roosevelt is emotional, personal and recognizes both the man's public life and his private life:

Where dwells he? Everywhere! In cottages,
And by the forge of labor and the desk
Of science. The torn spelling book
Is blotted with the name of Roosevelt,
And like a myth he floats upon the winds
Of India and Ceylon. His brotherhood
Includes the fallen kings. Himself a king,
He left a stamp upon his countrymen
Like Charlemagne.

                         Yes, note the life of kings!
A throne's a day of judgment in itself,
And shows the flaw within the emerald.
For every king must seem more than he is;
Ambition holds her prism before his eye,
Burlesques his virtues, rides upon his car
Clouded with false effulgence, till the man
Loses his nature in a second self,
Which is his role. Yet Theodore survived—
Resumed his natural splendor as he sank
Like Titan in the ocean.

                                       The great war
Was all a fight for Paris—must she fall
And be a heap of desolation ere
Relief could reach her? Sad America
Dreamed in the distance as a charmed thing
Till Roosevelt, like Roland, blew his horn.
Alone he did it! By his personal will.
Alone—till'others echoed—bellowing
From shore to shore across the continent,
Like a sea monster to the sleeping seals
Of Pribylov. Then, slowly wakening,
The flock prepared for war. 'Twas just in time
One blast the less, and our preparedness
Had come an hour too late.

                                           Ay, traveller,
Who wanderest by the bridges of the Seine,
Past palaces and churches, marts and streets,
Whose names are syllables in history,
'Twas Roosevelt saved Paris. There she stands!
Look where you will—the towers of Notre Dame,
The quays, the columns, the Triumphal Arch—
To those who know, they are his monument.

Wisdom's there for youth to get

When Edward Sandford Martin was invited to speak at the Harvard Club dinner in New York, everyone should have expected something fun and witty. A founder of the Harvard Lampoon, Martin's humor was celebrated even before his graduation from Harvard in 1877. Standing before his fellow alumni on January 31, 1908, Martin presented his poem "What For?" — a spirited though genuine poem about the student experience there:

What do we go to Harvard for?
What is it all about?
Our fathers knew of something there
They thought it worth our while to share;
Something we think our boys can't spare,
So they go, too; and all the more
The riddle presses "What's it for?"
What's in Harvard that men misdoubt
'Twere futile thrift to do without?

Wisdom's there for youth to get:
Follies galore to do.
Did ever youth learn wisdom yet
But glanced at Folly too?
Between the covers of books
Stands knowledge in noble store,
But it's not all there; it's everywhere:
And to learn to know its looks,
And find, and use it more and more,
Is what we go to Harvard for.

To get in touch with many men,
And to get close up to a few:
To make wise marks with a doubtful pen;
And to guess, and have it come true.
To learn to make food and drink
With labor and mirth agree;
To learn to live, and learn to think;
And to learn to be happy though free—

These at Harvard seek our Youth,
Nor in their seeking fail.
And they gain betimes the vision of truth;
And they play some games with Yale.
If they don't 'most always win,
The reason 's easily shown;
The board at home's so rich in fare
They can't get hungry enough to care
With due concern and enough despair,
Who gets contention's bone.

Mulligan: back to sweet Clark County

Clark County, from Wikipedia

James Hillary Mulligan was born in Lexington, Kentucky in 1844 — and was quite proud of it. Though he moved to Canada for a part of his education, he returned to complete his legal studies at Kentucky University. As a writer, editor, judge, and elected official in the state (or, technically, the commonwealth), much of his career is focused on Kentucky, including his poetry. On November 15, 1905, he was invited to present a poem to the Commercial Club in Winchester. He happily read a poem he wrote for the occasion, "Back to Sweet Clark County":

       I am weary of the wandering,
       The waiting and the pondering,
The shadows kindly lengthen out their warning;
       And I've come to the conclusion,
       Inspiration or illusion,
And I'm back to sweet Clark County in the morning.

       The years loiter still and dreary,
       Musing voices hale and cheery,
Old memories around my heart are storming;
       And the saddened days forlorn
       But lengthen out the cheerless morn,
And I'm off to sweet Clark County in the morning.

       And though the years a-many be,
       A scene comes often back to me,
A homestead quaint and landscape fair adorning,
       Yet an incense floats too often,
       And this makes the heart to soften,
And I'm off to sweet Clark County in the morning.

       Wandering wide in stranger lands,
       I've felt the clasp of kindly hands,
And while no thrill of friendship pulses scorning;
       Of a truth, in nothing vaunting,
       Other than a something wanting—
And I'm off to sweet Clark County in the morning.

Incidentally, Mulligan's former home, Maxwell Place, is now the official residence of the president of the University of Kentucky.

Dunbar: give up reading entirely

At the turn of the century, Paul Laurence Dunbar was at the height of his fame. His poetry and prose had attracted first a regional then a national audience. He worked hard to be prolific and supplemented his income (and fame) by givng public readings. Throughout it all, he was dying of tuberculosis.

For the frequent coughing fits, sometimes bloody ones, doctors told Dunbar to try alcohol. He chose whisky as his drink of choice but his attempts to solve his problematic health resulted in another problem: alcoholism. The pain from his disease seemed a good enough reason to rely on the bottle, but his personal depression and the challenges in his personal life were equally good excuses. And so, Dunbar drank more heavily.

On October 19, 1900, his personal troubles spilled over into his professional poetic life. That day, in Evanston, Illinois, Dunbar took to the podium for a reading in a Methodist church. Dunbar showed up late and obviously drunk. He had been known for his commanding voice; instead, he mumbled and coughed frequently. One by one, those in attendance left in disgust (Evanston was a center for the temperance movement).

The press picked up the story, causing further embarassment particularly for his wife Alice Dunbar (with whom he would become estranged in two years). Dunbar himself wrote a letter to the editor apologizing for his performance, noting his ill health and the use of alcohol for medicinal purposes. His friend James Weldon Johnson invited him to his home in Florida to rest. Dunbar recognized that things had changed for him, writing soon after to the friend who had helped arrange the Evanston appearance that he had disgraced himself and ashamed his friend. He concluded, "I have cancelled all my engagements and given up reading entirely." His poem "The Debt" (1895):

This is the debt I pay
Just for one riotous day,
Years of regret and grief,
Sorrow without relief.

Pay it I will to the end —
Until the grave, my friend,
Gives me a true release —
Gives me the clasp of peace.

Slight was the thing I bought,
Small was the debt I thought,
Poor was the loan at best —
God! but the interest!

Utterly disgusted with authorship

In 1822, James Gates Percival admitted, "I am utterly disgusted with authorship." He vowed never to write another line of poetry and instead began teaching chemistry and practicing as an occasional medical doctor. Nevertheless, he agreed to present a poem for the Phi Beta Kappa Society at his alma mater Yale College that fall. Soon, he felt he had made a mistake and instead presented an oration — not a poem.

But, three years later, Percival announced to a friend, "I have been appointed to deliver a poem before the Phi Beta Kappa at New Haven, and am resolved to appear there." Their meeting that year was on September 13, 1825. For it, he prepared a long poem which he titled "The Mind." The poem begins with his statement of purpose:

Of Mind, and its mysterious agencies,
And most of all, its high creative Power,
In fashioning the elements of things
To loftier images, than have on earth
Or in the sky their home — that come to us
In the still visitation of a dream,
Or rise in light before us when we muse;
Or at the bidding of the mightier take
Fixed residence in fitly sounding verse,
Or on the glowing canvass, or in shapes
Hewn from the living rock: — of these, and all
That wake us in our better thoughts, and lead
The spirit to the enduring and sublime,
It is my purpose now to hold awhile
Seemly discourse, and with befitting words
Cloth the conceptions, I have sought to frame.

The poem is a strange, rambling, unrhymed, and meterless mesh of abstract thoughts. In a sense, "The Mind" was more like another oration than a poem. One account says he stopped reading halfway through and sat down, declining to finish. Another says he asked not to read it at the ceremony and, when pressed, rushed through it so quickly that his reading was referred to as a "laughable one." Perhaps Percival's reticence to present a poem in 1822 was justified; his 1825 poem went without a publisher for months. Instead, a group of friends paid him for his manuscript and had it printed. Though they offered it to bookstores, very few copies were sold.

After this disastrous period of authorship attempts in the 1820s, Percival turned to something more practical and less imaginative: assisting Noah Webster in the creation of a dictionary of the English language.

Emerson: we will speak our own minds

Delivered as an oration before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard College on August 31, 1837, Ralph Waldo Emerson's speech "The American Scholar" was hailed almost immediately as a turning point in American cultural history. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, who witnessed Emerson's speech that day, called it the "intellectual" Declaration of Independence (others, incidentally, were not as impressed right away).

Emerson begins by noting the group is made of lovers of letters, who seldom have time to write. The "sluggard intellect" of the continent has been hampered, but he foresees that poetry and other intellectual pursuits will be revived and lead the country into a new age. Put into categories like "farmer," men lose the sense that they are men. In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. But, he says, "In the right state, he is, Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men's thinking."

The speech details the education of the scholar as in three parts: nature, books, and action. He also breaks down the duties he expects of the American scholar. Even if he is shunned from society and becomes stricken with poverty and solitude, Emerson insists his role is too important:

He is to find consolation in exercising the highest functions of human nature. He is one, who raises himself from private considerations, and breathes and lives on public and illustrious thoughts. He is the world's eye. He is the world's heart. He is to resist the vulgar prosperity that retrogrades ever to barbarism, by preserving and communicating heroic sentiments, noble biographies, melodious verse, and the conclusions of history. Whatsoever oracles the human heart, in all emergencies, in all solemn hours, has uttered as its commentary on the world of actions, — these he shall receive and impart. And whatsoever new verdict Reason from her inviolable seat pronounces on the passing men and events of to-day, — this he shall hear and promulgate.

To be imaginative is a part of being intellectual, Emerson says, and he demands a new importance be granted to individuals as part of the larger whole. Further, he says that intellectualism in this country must stay true to America: "We have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe." The assumption is that the American mind is too tame, timid, or imitative. With the next generation of intellectuals before him, Emerson predicts, "We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds."

Whitfield: song of the unfettered slave

From an early publication,
courtesy of The Classroom Electric

On August 1, 1834, Great Britain abolished slavery in the West Indies. The anniversary of that event made August 1 a day of celebration for African American abolitionists in the United States — one which was more meaningful than the Fourth of July. On August 1, 1849, an anti-slavery gathering in Buffalo, New York included a presentation by James Monroe Whitfield — a free born African American who was a barber by trade — who read his poem "Stanzas for the First of August":

From bright West Indies' sunny seas,
     Comes, borne upon the balmy breeze,
The joyous shout, the gladsome tone,
     Long in those bloody isles unknown;
Bearing across the heaving wave
The song of the unfettered slave.

No charging squadrons shook the ground,
     When freedom here her claims obtained;
No cannon, with tremendous sound,
     The noble patriot's cause maintained:
No furious battle-charger neighed,
No brother fell by brother's blade.

None of those desperate scenes of strife,
     Which mark the warrior's proud career,
The awful waste of human life,
     Have ever been enacted here;
But truth and justice spoke from heaven,
And slavery's galling chain was riven.

'Twas moral force which broke the chain,
     That bound eight hundred thousand men;
And when we see it snapped in twain,
     Shall we not join in praises then? —
And prayers unto Almighty God,
Who smote to earth the tyrant's rod?

And from those islands of the sea,
     The scenes of blood and crime and wrong,
The glorious anthem of the free,
     Now swells in mighty chorus strong;
Telling th' oppressed, where'er they roam,
Those islands now are freedom's home.

*Further reading: The Works of James Monroe Whitfield: 'America' and Other Writings by a Ninteenth-Century African American Poet, edited by Robert S. Levine and Ivy Wilson (2011).

And now the parting moment, 1841

The commencement exercises for Yale College's class of 1841 included a valedictory poem, oration, and song by fellow members. The poem was by Guy Bryan Schott, the oration was by Donald Grant Mitchell, the song by Richard Storrs Willis. The event took place on July 7, 1841.

"We meet to part!" began Schott's poem, which expressed both a reluctance to leave, but a desire to depart their institution. But theirs was not to question "the Omniscient," and Schott asks, "Has earth no charms? hath life no poetry?" He concludes:

And now the parting moment hastens near—
   How sad its joy, how mingled with regret,
At rending ties time only made more dear,
   And leaving scenes we never can forget!
Fond memory oft shall from its flower-strewn track,
   The blissful houre that fleeted here recall,
And roaming fancy love to wander back,
   And dwell once more within this classic hall.
'Tis sweet to linger! it is hard to part!
   And anguish'd feelings in the bosom swell,
Sad thoughts too deep for words oppress the heart—
   Friends of my youth, a long, a last farewell!

Schott apparently also said farewell to his pursuit of poetry; no further works have been discovered. Mitchell, however, was only at the beginning of what became modest fame as a writer. Under the pseudonym "Ik Marvel," he published a small number of books which met with some acclaim. His valedictory oration focused on "the Dignity of American Learning," which he said was best guided by a desire to discover and appreciate absolute truth: "While we do live," he said, "may we live to some purpose."

Willis, who came from a very literary family, was also at the cusp of what became a great career. In the years which followed he would move west, become an accomplished composer as well as the editor of a music journal. His song concluded:

And for us who linger here,
   Yet one parting strain.
When shall music's grateful voice
   Blend our hearts again!
God speed you, comrades! still
Heaven protect and guard you well.
Bright the sky, and fair the gale—
   Peace to honor'd 'Yale!'

Mathews: a new generation

"We are a new generation, for good or evil," said Cornelius Mathews in a speech before the Eucleian Society at New York University on June 30, 1845. This new generation, according to him, was poised to create the defining culture of the still-young United States. In his speech, in fact, Mathews coined the term already floating in his circle for this movement: "Young America." As he said:

Whatever that past generation of statesmen, law-givers and writers was capable of, we know. What they attained, what they failed to attain, we also know. Our duty and our destiny is another from theirs. Liking not at all its borrowed sound, we are yet (there is no better way to name it,) the Young America of the people: a new generation; and it is for us now to inquire, what we may have it in our power to accomplish, and on what objects the world may reasonably ask that we should fix our regards.

In particular, novelist/editor Mathews believed the generation should fix upon literature and other cultural arts in order to create an American identity. "I therefore, in behalf of this young America of ours," he said, "insist on nationality and true Americanism in the books this country furnishes to itself and to the world."

Though the sentiment was not particularly unusual in this period, Mathews and others (including  anthologist Evert Augustus Duyckinck and John L. O'Sullivan, editor of the Democratic Review) gave a name to an idea: that America was young, but growing, and that it was ready to achieve maturity.

*Much of this information is owed to Edward L. Widmer's Young America: The Flowering of Democracy in New York City (2000).

Lo! the immortal idea!

Walt Whitman's fame waxed and waned throughout his life and career, and his writing remained controversial in many circles. However, one of the highest points came when Dartmouth College in New Hampshire invited Whitman to deliver a poem at their commencement on June 26, 1872. In fact, the invitation came from the graduating students, without the explicit approval of faculty or administration.

Whitman was certainly a strange choice for Dartmouth, such that scholar Bliss Perry later speculated that the invitation had been a prank. Nevertheless, for his reading on that rainy day, Whitman was paid $35. Accounts differ on the level of success: one report said the poet spoke in monotone and could not be heard well, while another referred to his "clearness of enunciation." The poem he read was "As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free," which begins:

As a strong bird, on pinions free,
Joyous, the amplest spaces heavenward cleaving,
Such be the thought I'd think to-day of thee, America;
Such be the recitative I'd bring to-day for thee.

The conceits of the poets of other lands I bring thee not,
Nor the compliments that have served their turn so long,
Nor rhyme — nor the classics — nor perfume of foreign court or indoor library;
But an odor I'd bring to-day as from forests of pine in the north, in Maine—or breath of an Illinois prairie,
With open airs of Virginia, or Georgia or Tennessee — or from Texas uplands or Florida's glades;
With presentment of Yellowstone's scenes or Yosemite;
And murmuring under, pervading all, I'd bring the restling sea sound,
That endlessly sounds from the two great seas of the world.

And for thy subtler sense, subtler refrains, O Union!
Preludes of intellect tallying these and thee — mind-formulas fitted for thee — real and sane and large as these and thee;
Thou, mounting higher, diving deeper than we knew — thou transcendental Union!
By thee Fact to be justified—blended with Thought;
Thought of Man justified — blended with God:
Through thy Idea — lo! the immortal Reality!
Through thy Reality — lo! the immortal idea!

*My introduction to this event came from Jerome Loving's biography Walt Whitman: The Song of Himself.

Cooke: daily, hourly, loving and giving

The graduation exercises for Smith College on June 22, 1881 included the reading of an original poem by Rose Terry Cooke. Cooke, a Connecticut-born poet and short story writer, did not read the poem herself; that honor was performed by elocution professor John Wesley Churchill. The poem, "The Flower Sower," features a young woman who approaches a priest with the simple question, "What shall I do?"

The young woman in the poem has become so troubled by the world, overwhelmed by its "earthly strife," that she has begun to isolate herself from it. The priest, an older man who has had his own share of difficulty, is first stunned into silence before finally answering:

Softly he spoke: —
                                "I give to thee
A daily service for God to do:
Work that shall keep thee safe and true,
Whatever evil shall walk abroad.
When loss and passion beset thy road,
And prayer and penance have no avail,
This shall hold thee with bands of steel..."

The task that the priest assigns to the young woman is simple: plant flowers on a daily basis.

"Scatter them daily up and down,
In the dirty lane and glittering town,
By every path where the children play,
By every road where the beggars stray,
By the church's door, and the market stall,
By peasant's hut, and by castle wall:
Let not one sun go down and say
'She hath not planted a flower today.'"

Sure enough, Cooke writes, she plants lavender, violets, poppies, larkspurs, and more. The effort not only brings happiness to the woman's life, but also to the lives of many others, "for toil and trouble were all forgot." The poem concludes with another question, "Is there a moral?" Simply, Cooke writes, sadness is offset by happiness, no matter how small the effort:

Not to every soul is given
To do some great thing under heaven.
But the grass-blades small and the drops of dew
Have their message to all of you,
And daily, hourly, loving and giving,
In the poorest life make heavenly living.

*For the text of this poem and some additional information, I am grateful to Nanci A. Young, College Archivist at Smith College.

Where Knowledge and Science are known!

When the University of Virginia turned 150 years old, alumnus Daniel Bedinger Lucas wrote a long dedicatory poem. He read the poem, "Semi-Centennial Ode," in front of the Society of Alumni on June 20, 1875. After referring to the school's founder Thomas Jefferson as "The Greatest American" and "Apostle of Reason" who had previously written the "Charter of Treason" (better known as the Declaration of Independence), the Virginia-born Lucas poetically claims that Jefferson was moved by a spirit which commanded him:

Build me a Temple of Learning, said she,
   Build me a Temple of stone —
Build for all ages: assuredly,
   Build for a man's Reason a throne;
For Freedom and Truth shall prosper
   Where Knowledge and Science are known!

That same spirit dictates the study not only of science but also of languages, philosophy, and more. Lucas also includes a very Americanist stance by calling for "Reason" as "the weapons of native power" and demands students never "bow to the alien pen!" He references only a couple of famous alumni, including fellow author Edgar Poe ("the harp of our Poe is unstrung"). Ultimately, Lucas claims that the 150-year old school is still young ("As this is her youth, I sing of her birth... For an Hundred years is a day upon earth, / And Fifty a morning in time"). The poem concludes:

From pillar, rotunda, arcade,
   From lecture-room, statue, and fane,
And landscape, and scholarly shade,
   And comrades saluted again,
And professor, and classmate and friend,
   And library, tome upon tome —
The beams of old memories lend
   New light as they welcome us home:
O, Mother! Fair Mother! refresh us,
   In the scope of thy bounteous dome!